[b]Introduction[/b]: Most SLI users and high end enthusiasts can appreciate the growing power and heat requirements of the high end enthusiast market. This is an area Hybrid Power aims to provide much needed alleviation to this problem. When there are 3 way and Quad SLI setups out there capable of pulling anywhere from 160 to 250 watts the question comes to mind. Do you really need your high end SLI setups to power your internet browsing experience where you will spend likely half of your PC usage?

[b] The Answer[/b]: Nvidia aims for Hybrid power to be the answer. The principle behind the idea is very simple. You really don't need your 3 Way SLI or Quad SLI graphic cards to run the base internet experience. You also dont need anymore than a single GPU to run all your video and high definition DVDs.

[b] The Technology Behind it[/b]

[b]But How?[/b]: Combining the PCIE bus with a low powered IGP. Simple enough? You'd think so. But this does require some pretty complex drivers and implementation.

[b]SMBUS The Trigger:[/b] The SMBUS has been around for a while since PCIE introduction. But it's gone largely unused for some time now. The SMBUS has the capability to turn on and off the GPUs "on the fly". This allows for GPUs to be turned on and off very quickly. Without even accessing the driver control panel.

[b]PWShort[/b]: PWShort allows for quick commincation through the GPUs connected through the system bus and memory. In theory it should allow for one to drive an integrated GPU as the main display device while letting the discreet GPUS do the rendering at minimal performance hit. I'll address this later in the investigation.

[b]Thoughts:[/b] The user interface is simple enough. But I'm going to break it down even further. As the basic functions are standard SLI switches your familiar with.

[b] The Modes in Detail[/b]

[b]Save Power[/b]: This mode shuts down the discreet GPUS completely. Everything is run off the IGP. This is the mode that SLI enthusiasts will love. It takes less than 2 seconds to enable and will decrease the heat and power output of your system significantly.

[b]Boost Performance:[/b] This mode is a little less obvious. It fully enables your discreet graphic cards and SLI solutions. All rendering data from your discreet graphic card is passed through the system bus to the onboard IGP to handle final render output. This allows for you to keep your monitor connected to the motherboard as seen in the diagram below rather than the desktop GPUs.

[b]Note:[/b] The current Hybrid Power connectors do not support dual link DVI and support a maximum resolution of 1920x1200.

[b]Additional Displays:[/b] This mode is fairly self evident. It will disable SLI completely and allow for your various graphic cards to be used to setup multiple displays. The primary display is still the onboard IGP. One of my few dissapointments with this tech. I believe that if your going to enable multi monitor and turn all your GPUS back on you should at least have access to your most powerful rendering device.

Introduction: Most SLI users and high end enthusiasts can appreciate the growing power and heat requirements of the high end enthusiast market. This is an area Hybrid Power aims to provide much needed alleviation to this problem. When there are 3 way and Quad SLI setups out there capable of pulling anywhere from 160 to 250 watts the question comes to mind. Do you really need your high end SLI setups to power your internet browsing experience where you will spend likely half of your PC usage?

The Answer: Nvidia aims for Hybrid power to be the answer. The principle behind the idea is very simple. You really don't need your 3 Way SLI or Quad SLI graphic cards to run the base internet experience. You also dont need anymore than a single GPU to run all your video and high definition DVDs.

The Technology Behind it

But How?: Combining the PCIE bus with a low powered IGP. Simple enough? You'd think so. But this does require some pretty complex drivers and implementation.

Hybrid Power On

Hybrid Power Off

SMBUS The Trigger: The SMBUS has been around for a while since PCIE introduction. But it's gone largely unused for some time now. The SMBUS has the capability to turn on and off the GPUs "on the fly". This allows for GPUs to be turned on and off very quickly. Without even accessing the driver control panel.

PWShort: PWShort allows for quick commincation through the GPUs connected through the system bus and memory. In theory it should allow for one to drive an integrated GPU as the main display device while letting the discreet GPUS do the rendering at minimal performance hit. I'll address this later in the investigation.

Interface and Hybrid Power Task Bar

Shot at 2008-05-06

Thoughts: The user interface is simple enough. But I'm going to break it down even further. As the basic functions are standard SLI switches your familiar with.

The Modes in Detail

Save Power: This mode shuts down the discreet GPUS completely. Everything is run off the IGP. This is the mode that SLI enthusiasts will love. It takes less than 2 seconds to enable and will decrease the heat and power output of your system significantly.

Boost Performance: This mode is a little less obvious. It fully enables your discreet graphic cards and SLI solutions. All rendering data from your discreet graphic card is passed through the system bus to the onboard IGP to handle final render output. This allows for you to keep your monitor connected to the motherboard as seen in the diagram below rather than the desktop GPUs.

Note: The current Hybrid Power connectors do not support dual link DVI and support a maximum resolution of 1920x1200.

Additional Displays: This mode is fairly self evident. It will disable SLI completely and allow for your various graphic cards to be used to setup multiple displays. The primary display is still the onboard IGP. One of my few dissapointments with this tech. I believe that if your going to enable multi monitor and turn all your GPUS back on you should at least have access to your most powerful rendering device.

[b] What you'll need[/b]: Currently the support list for Hybrid power is short. And it's only supported on the AMD platform.

[b]GPU Support[/b] 9800GX2 and 9800GTx. Thats it. The 8800 series is not supported. According to Nvidia the 9800GX2 and 9800GTX have a special switch which allows for "Powering on and off" of the GPUs through the SM BUs. This switch does not exist in earlier Nvidia products. It should also be mentioned that that not all future Nvidia cards are going to support it either. Nvidia views this as a "high end" feature. And to be fair they are right. Not many people with low end 8500 GT cards are terribly concerned about their power output. However future high end Nvidia cards should also support Hybrid Power.

[b] Motherboard Support[/b]: Currently Hybrid Power is only supported on the AMD side of things. The first chipsets support it being the Nforce 720A, Nforce 730A, and 750A SLI and 780A SLI. In the future Nvidia says it plans to bring this support over to the Intel platform with future motherboards. But wouldn't give much more details beyond that.

[b] Power Supply Support[/b]: Remember the confusing list from the 9800GX2 Supported PSUs? Well this one is just as confusing. Nvidia will provide an up to date list of PSU"s which have passed their certification process for Hybrid SLI.

[b] First Thoughts[/b]: First thoughts upon recieving this board were. "About Time". AMD users have been stuck using Nforce 5 series motherboards for far too long. Often have I been questioned. "When will Nvidia support 3 way SLI for the AMD CPUS? Has Nvidia given up on the AMD market" The 780A from Nvidia answers both of those questions. I'm not entirely sure what the delay was in getting the Nforce 780A to the market was. But the 780A has been talked about and hinted upon since back in November and here it is.

[b]Motherboard Impressions:[/b] I am not going to go too deep into reviewing the actual motherboard. It offers pretty much what you'd expect from a high end Nvidia Nforce chipset. A Small list of features that should standout.

[b]The IGP Itself[/b]: Nvidia is reluctant to give out full details on the IGP itself but offers that its fairly equivalent to a Geforce 8200. Fair enough. I'm still going to take a small look at it to give you guys an idea of what to expect.

[b]Core Clock[/b]: 500 Mhz
[b]Shader Clock[/b]: 1200 MHz
[b]Memory Clock[/b]: This will be based on your DDR2/DDR3 memory frequency. 800 in this case.

[b]Thoughts:[/b] Thats about all your going to get from the Nvidia tools. Nvidia is also not very eager to tell the inner workings of the MGPU. If I were to guess based on my own fillrate tests. The 780A IGP is a 2 ROP and 4 TMU part with 16 streaming processors. But please keep in mind this is only speculation on my part based on a limited number of tests I have ran. Amongst other things it fully supports Windows Vista Aero and Purevideo 3.0.

What you'll need: Currently the support list for Hybrid power is short. And it's only supported on the AMD platform.

GPU Support 9800GX2 and 9800GTx. Thats it. The 8800 series is not supported. According to Nvidia the 9800GX2 and 9800GTX have a special switch which allows for "Powering on and off" of the GPUs through the SM BUs. This switch does not exist in earlier Nvidia products. It should also be mentioned that that not all future Nvidia cards are going to support it either. Nvidia views this as a "high end" feature. And to be fair they are right. Not many people with low end 8500 GT cards are terribly concerned about their power output. However future high end Nvidia cards should also support Hybrid Power.

Motherboard Support: Currently Hybrid Power is only supported on the AMD side of things. The first chipsets support it being the Nforce 720A, Nforce 730A, and 750A SLI and 780A SLI. In the future Nvidia says it plans to bring this support over to the Intel platform with future motherboards. But wouldn't give much more details beyond that.

Power Supply Support: Remember the confusing list from the 9800GX2 Supported PSUs? Well this one is just as confusing. Nvidia will provide an up to date list of PSU"s which have passed their certification process for Hybrid SLI.

Note: You may be able to get away with another PSU. But Nvidia cant gaurentee stability on any PSU not in their list.

Introducing the Asus M3N HT SLI Deluxe

First Thoughts: First thoughts upon recieving this board were. "About Time". AMD users have been stuck using Nforce 5 series motherboards for far too long. Often have I been questioned. "When will Nvidia support 3 way SLI for the AMD CPUS? Has Nvidia given up on the AMD market" The 780A from Nvidia answers both of those questions. I'm not entirely sure what the delay was in getting the Nforce 780A to the market was. But the 780A has been talked about and hinted upon since back in November and here it is.

Motherboard Impressions: I am not going to go too deep into reviewing the actual motherboard. It offers pretty much what you'd expect from a high end Nvidia Nforce chipset. A Small list of features that should standout.

The IGP Itself: Nvidia is reluctant to give out full details on the IGP itself but offers that its fairly equivalent to a Geforce 8200. Fair enough. I'm still going to take a small look at it to give you guys an idea of what to expect.

Core Clock: 500 Mhz

Shader Clock: 1200 MHz

Memory Clock: This will be based on your DDR2/DDR3 memory frequency. 800 in this case.

Thoughts: Thats about all your going to get from the Nvidia tools. Nvidia is also not very eager to tell the inner workings of the MGPU. If I were to guess based on my own fillrate tests. The 780A IGP is a 2 ROP and 4 TMU part with 16 streaming processors. But please keep in mind this is only speculation on my part based on a limited number of tests I have ran. Amongst other things it fully supports Windows Vista Aero and Purevideo 3.0.

[b] Power Saving Mode[/b]:Since the power saving mode is the whole point of Hybrid SLI I decided to take a brief gander at the IGP's performance. I am not bothering with gaming benches for 2 reasons. Anyone using Hybrid Power is unlikely to be interested in the GPUs gaming performance if they are powering down there system to lower power and heat. The purpose of Hybrid SLI was never to replace discreet GPU solutions for 3D gaming. Simply provide a power friendly alternative for Windows Aero, HD DVD and other simple desktop tasks. However UT3 was playable at 1024x768 with modest in game settings with AA disabled.

[b]Note:[/b] System users must sacrafice at least 256 megs of system memory to be dedicated to the onboard IGP. Anything less will not allow for hybrid SLI technology to work. You can also set this to 512. But I saw no benefit in doing this. I strongly recommend performance enthusiasts doing this to have 4 gigs of memory as 256 meg loss from 4 gigs is a splash in the ocean. But with 2 gigs there could be some memory performance degredation in some cases.

[b]Windows Vista Aero Benchmark[/b]: You'll have to forgive the silly Windows Vista test. But its the only way Im aware of for benching Vistas Aero performance. The performance of the IGP is more than enough to run Windows Vista Aero. A 4.4 Scores is far more than enough for your basic Aero experience.

[b]DVD Video[/b]: This test was just to run some basic DVD video and movie viewing. The MPEG2 acceleration codec of purevideo works just fine here. To Ante the task up I displayed 2 videos at once as well adjusted the Windows Aero task bar.

[b]Performance Mode:[/b] Performance Mode is just that. It will use the rendering mode of your base graphic solutions. In this case Quad 9800GX2 SLI. All data will be rendered through the discreet IGP. Unfortunately there is a small performance hit associated with doing this verses just running from your graphic card.

[b]Thoughts[/b]: Nvidia claims there can be up to a 5% performance hit. But as usual Nvidia always imagines up worse case scenerios. In typical usage the performance hit is pretty marginal and even if your looking for the drop it will be hard to spot.

[b]Overall Thoughts and Conclusion[/b]: When I first got my 6800GT SLI setup. My first thought was; "Wow This is amazing performance". My second thought was; "Is it getting a little warm in here?". From this enthusiast point of view Hybrid SLI has been a long time coming. Anything to lower overall power and heat output is a blessing to the enthusiast. During long hot summers you'll be thankful that you can turn off your discreet GPUs.

[b] Pros[/b]

1) Easily Toggled on and Off
2) Much lower power utilization in Hybrid Power mode.
3) Strong Desktop IGP performance at low power cost.
4) Minimal performance loss for running Hybrid SLI.

[b] Cons[/b]

1) No Intel Support yet. Coming at a later date.
2) Requires 256 megs of system memory to operate.
3) Only 9800GTX and 9800GX2 Support. However future High End GPUs from Nvidia should support Hybrid Power.
4) Limited to 1920x1200 resolution. Nvidia claims future boards should support dual link DVI.
5) Windows Vista Only.

Power Saving Mode:Since the power saving mode is the whole point of Hybrid SLI I decided to take a brief gander at the IGP's performance. I am not bothering with gaming benches for 2 reasons. Anyone using Hybrid Power is unlikely to be interested in the GPUs gaming performance if they are powering down there system to lower power and heat. The purpose of Hybrid SLI was never to replace discreet GPU solutions for 3D gaming. Simply provide a power friendly alternative for Windows Aero, HD DVD and other simple desktop tasks. However UT3 was playable at 1024x768 with modest in game settings with AA disabled.

Note: System users must sacrafice at least 256 megs of system memory to be dedicated to the onboard IGP. Anything less will not allow for hybrid SLI technology to work. You can also set this to 512. But I saw no benefit in doing this. I strongly recommend performance enthusiasts doing this to have 4 gigs of memory as 256 meg loss from 4 gigs is a splash in the ocean. But with 2 gigs there could be some memory performance degredation in some cases.

Windows Vista Aero Benchmark: You'll have to forgive the silly Windows Vista test. But its the only way Im aware of for benching Vistas Aero performance. The performance of the IGP is more than enough to run Windows Vista Aero. A 4.4 Scores is far more than enough for your basic Aero experience.

DVD Video: This test was just to run some basic DVD video and movie viewing. The MPEG2 acceleration codec of purevideo works just fine here. To Ante the task up I displayed 2 videos at once as well adjusted the Windows Aero task bar.

HD Video Performance: Unfortunately I had to exclude this test due to some software problems... well actually I left my only HD movies at a friends place.

Performance Mode: Performance Mode is just that. It will use the rendering mode of your base graphic solutions. In this case Quad 9800GX2 SLI. All data will be rendered through the discreet IGP. Unfortunately there is a small performance hit associated with doing this verses just running from your graphic card.

Unreal Tournament 3

Crysis

Shot at 2008-05-07

Neverwinter Nights 2

Thoughts: Nvidia claims there can be up to a 5% performance hit. But as usual Nvidia always imagines up worse case scenerios. In typical usage the performance hit is pretty marginal and even if your looking for the drop it will be hard to spot.

Overall Thoughts and Conclusion: When I first got my 6800GT SLI setup. My first thought was; "Wow This is amazing performance". My second thought was; "Is it getting a little warm in here?". From this enthusiast point of view Hybrid SLI has been a long time coming. Anything to lower overall power and heat output is a blessing to the enthusiast. During long hot summers you'll be thankful that you can turn off your discreet GPUs.

Pros

1) Easily Toggled on and Off

2) Much lower power utilization in Hybrid Power mode.

3) Strong Desktop IGP performance at low power cost.

4) Minimal performance loss for running Hybrid SLI.

Cons

1) No Intel Support yet. Coming at a later date.

2) Requires 256 megs of system memory to operate.

3) Only 9800GTX and 9800GX2 Support. However future High End GPUs from Nvidia should support Hybrid Power.

I couldn't disagree with this assessment more. I know I am just 1 user and 1 experience, but very little time on my SLi rig is spent outside of gaming. I occasionally look up game related info on the web, but thats done on the laptop to my left which is not meant for gaming. I also only peruse these forums when I am at work and not able to game.

I am not suggesting in the least that this hybrid power thing is a bad idea though. Why keep the machine running hot when I am asleep or at work? This could definitely increase the overall lifetime expectancy of my GPU's. Sleep and work alone, not counting driving and life's daily chores, occupy 20 hours of my day on work days (working 3.25 days a week for my 40 hours) and of course, I sleep every day.

This could save power and reduce heat on the GPU's for [i]at least[/i] 4,948 hours a year. Thats an awesome idea. Kinda wish the technology was available for guys like me not running SLi with the required equipment mentioned above.

I couldn't disagree with this assessment more. I know I am just 1 user and 1 experience, but very little time on my SLi rig is spent outside of gaming. I occasionally look up game related info on the web, but thats done on the laptop to my left which is not meant for gaming. I also only peruse these forums when I am at work and not able to game.

I am not suggesting in the least that this hybrid power thing is a bad idea though. Why keep the machine running hot when I am asleep or at work? This could definitely increase the overall lifetime expectancy of my GPU's. Sleep and work alone, not counting driving and life's daily chores, occupy 20 hours of my day on work days (working 3.25 days a week for my 40 hours) and of course, I sleep every day.

This could save power and reduce heat on the GPU's for at least 4,948 hours a year. Thats an awesome idea. Kinda wish the technology was available for guys like me not running SLi with the required equipment mentioned above.

Having to use seperate systems because power and heat are so high is just a testament of the problem. I have a laptop too. Which I got for similar reasons. But my laptop isnt anywhere near as fast as my PC. Even in desktop I'd prefer a Quad Core Phenom with 4 gigs of Memory to a Laptop with a Dual Dual Core Turion with a Geforce 7600 Go. Laptops are meant to be portable computing devices. Not meant to replace desktops entirely. And the desktop replacement laptops have a hard enough problem with heat and power as is. That is why this is such a welcome feature. With Cool And Quiet And Hybrid Power. My System goes from high end power heat requirements to low end requirements.

Having to use seperate systems because power and heat are so high is just a testament of the problem. I have a laptop too. Which I got for similar reasons. But my laptop isnt anywhere near as fast as my PC. Even in desktop I'd prefer a Quad Core Phenom with 4 gigs of Memory to a Laptop with a Dual Dual Core Turion with a Geforce 7600 Go. Laptops are meant to be portable computing devices. Not meant to replace desktops entirely. And the desktop replacement laptops have a hard enough problem with heat and power as is. That is why this is such a welcome feature. With Cool And Quiet And Hybrid Power. My System goes from high end power heat requirements to low end requirements.

SLI is now more than the tech behind it, its a classification of gamers and their systems who want the BEST they can get, we want our cake, we want it no matter the cost :)

HybridPower is a damn nice idea, it brings the top .5% of gaming rigs a chance to not act like space heaters all the time, as you say though, the problem at the moment is AMD. I tried to stick with them, I was fooling myself.

Once this is mainstream, and is shown not to alter performance at all, it will simply "be used", but until both architectures have a top notch SLI board with this, it will be ignored.

Its not a killer feature, its nice, but power efficiency is not what we build our rigs for :)

SLI is now more than the tech behind it, its a classification of gamers and their systems who want the BEST they can get, we want our cake, we want it no matter the cost :)

HybridPower is a damn nice idea, it brings the top .5% of gaming rigs a chance to not act like space heaters all the time, as you say though, the problem at the moment is AMD. I tried to stick with them, I was fooling myself.

Once this is mainstream, and is shown not to alter performance at all, it will simply "be used", but until both architectures have a top notch SLI board with this, it will be ignored.

Its not a killer feature, its nice, but power efficiency is not what we build our rigs for :)

Nvidia should be aggressively putting IGPs on all future motherboards. So I expect it to become mainstream from a motherboard perspective. You'll see it on both Nvidia and Intel motherboards. I dont think you'll ever see it "performance free" though. Theres a cost of sending the data over the PCIE bus. The performance loss is IMO insignificant. The highest I've seen it go was about 2 FPS less in a tittle like HL2.

Nvidia should be aggressively putting IGPs on all future motherboards. So I expect it to become mainstream from a motherboard perspective. You'll see it on both Nvidia and Intel motherboards. I dont think you'll ever see it "performance free" though. Theres a cost of sending the data over the PCIE bus. The performance loss is IMO insignificant. The highest I've seen it go was about 2 FPS less in a tittle like HL2.

I can speak from my own experience (I am a hardware writer for MaximoPC argentina) concerning the Hybrid Power.

Too much strict requirement for broad acceptance.

For example:

-You have to have only a Geforce 9800GTX or 9800GX2 (that's fair enough since they are the only ones that have the new switching in-hardware)

-you have to have a 8200 or 780 motherboard

- Dont work on Intel yet.

- Dont work on any motherboard outside nvidias (Hybrid Power)

- Dont work on any O.S. outside Vista (not XP, not Linux = excluding Linux you are excluding more than 30 distros)

THat kind of limitation does really tend to lower the enthusiast level.

For my own personal experience, I don't like Vista, at ALL, not only because it is troublesome to use in a Hardware Lab for testing (we have to manually re-install the dam thing for every change in the platform) but because it is not performing like we wanted, where windows XP with SP3 does all we need to.

So, for that kind of limitations, it is really easy to see why there is not much interest.

Now my questions:

- Is it too hard to implement on another chipsets (like the Intel ones) ?

- Is the any way to implement technologies on other O.S. because restricting to Windows Vista is really a bad thing (for me), actually, you think Vista is the "greatest" but if you analyze how much people use Vista vs XP you will see that implementing techonolgy FIRST on XP and then on Vista is a wiser move.

- Will ever us (linux users) get new technology at launch ? or should we get it in 3 years from now?

Those are my questions, I am currently doing the review of a Hybrid Power system that will be published on Maximopc site (www. maximopc . org) so, any help on this will be appreciated to make a review more complete.

[quote name='ChrisRay' post='167965' date='May 12 2008, 12:27 AM']Nvidia should be aggressively putting IGPs on all future motherboards. So I expect it to become mainstream from a motherboard perspective. You'll see it on both Nvidia and Intel motherboards. I dont think you'll ever see it "performance free" though. Theres a cost of sending the data over the PCIE bus. The performance loss is IMO insignificant. The highest I've seen it go was about 2 FPS less in a tittle like HL2.

I can speak from my own experience (I am a hardware writer for MaximoPC argentina) concerning the Hybrid Power.

Too much strict requirement for broad acceptance.

For example:

-You have to have only a Geforce 9800GTX or 9800GX2 (that's fair enough since they are the only ones that have the new switching in-hardware)

-you have to have a 8200 or 780 motherboard

- Dont work on Intel yet.

- Dont work on any motherboard outside nvidias (Hybrid Power)

- Dont work on any O.S. outside Vista (not XP, not Linux = excluding Linux you are excluding more than 30 distros)

THat kind of limitation does really tend to lower the enthusiast level.

For my own personal experience, I don't like Vista, at ALL, not only because it is troublesome to use in a Hardware Lab for testing (we have to manually re-install the dam thing for every change in the platform) but because it is not performing like we wanted, where windows XP with SP3 does all we need to.

So, for that kind of limitations, it is really easy to see why there is not much interest.

Now my questions:

- Is it too hard to implement on another chipsets (like the Intel ones) ?

- Is the any way to implement technologies on other O.S. because restricting to Windows Vista is really a bad thing (for me), actually, you think Vista is the "greatest" but if you analyze how much people use Vista vs XP you will see that implementing techonolgy FIRST on XP and then on Vista is a wiser move.

- Will ever us (linux users) get new technology at launch ? or should we get it in 3 years from now?

Those are my questions, I am currently doing the review of a Hybrid Power system that will be published on Maximopc site (www. maximopc . org) so, any help on this will be appreciated to make a review more complete.

[quote name='ChrisRay' post='167965' date='May 12 2008, 12:27 AM']Nvidia should be aggressively putting IGPs on all future motherboards. So I expect it to become mainstream from a motherboard perspective. You'll see it on both Nvidia and Intel motherboards. I dont think you'll ever see it "performance free" though. Theres a cost of sending the data over the PCIE bus. The performance loss is IMO insignificant. The highest I've seen it go was about 2 FPS less in a tittle like HL2.

Intel chipsets will unlikely ever support it. It requires an Nvidia IGP. Not an intel one. So unless that Intel chipset has an onboard Nvidia GPU. You'll unlikely ever see it. The onboard IGP is the heart of Hybrid Power. And future Nvidia based intel chipsets should support one. I dont know about the XP or Linux thing. I see it as a possibility for XP but I'm pretty sure linux is low priority,

Chris

Why do you have to manually reinstall Vista for each platform change? I change my motherboard/platform all the time and I've never had to reinstall it. Worse thing I've ever had to do is reactivate it. This vista install has been through 4 motherboards, ((680I, 780I, 790I, 780A)) and the worse I've ever had to do is uninstall the chipset drivers in safe mode,

Intel chipsets will unlikely ever support it. It requires an Nvidia IGP. Not an intel one. So unless that Intel chipset has an onboard Nvidia GPU. You'll unlikely ever see it. The onboard IGP is the heart of Hybrid Power. And future Nvidia based intel chipsets should support one. I dont know about the XP or Linux thing. I see it as a possibility for XP but I'm pretty sure linux is low priority,

Chris

Why do you have to manually reinstall Vista for each platform change? I change my motherboard/platform all the time and I've never had to reinstall it. Worse thing I've ever had to do is reactivate it. This vista install has been through 4 motherboards, ((680I, 780I, 790I, 780A)) and the worse I've ever had to do is uninstall the chipset drivers in safe mode,